From 1923 to 1967, Morison was a typographic consultant for the
Monotype Corporation. In the 1920s and 1930s, his work at Monotype included research and adaptation of historical typefaces, including the revival of the
Bembo and
Bell types. He pioneered the great expansion of the company's range of typefaces, and hugely influenced the field of typography to the present day. At Monotype, Morison obtained rights to typefaces by leading artists of the time including
Bruce Rogers,
Jan van Krimpen and
Berthold Wolpe. Aesthetically, Morison disliked the excessive historicity of Victorian romantic fine printing, with its interest in reviving
blackletter and the appearance of medieval manuscripts, but preferred a more restrained style of printing that nonetheless also rejected the harshly industrial appearance of the "batteries of bold, bad faces" of the nineteenth century. Morison and Warde helped edit Monotype's newsletter, the
Monotype Recorder, which promoted Monotype equipment and provided tips for users, showcased examples of high-quality printing and included articles on printing history, several by Morison's collaborator
Alfred F. Johnson, a curator at the
British Museum. Through
Daniel Berkeley Updike, the leading figure in American printing of the time with whom he carried an extensive correspondence, he became aware of an obscure late-eighteenth century type known as
Bell in the archives of Sheffield type foundry
Stephenson Blake, and arranged for Monotype to license and recreate it. While not all his projects at Monotype were successful and his position was insecure at the start of his tenure, his commission of
Gill Sans and even more so
Times New Roman both proved extremely financially successful for Monotype. Late in life, for Crutchley he wrote the book
A Tally of Types, an assessment of the typefaces created by Monotype that were used in Cambridge. Despite its limited scope and some oversights, it is considered one of the landmark books on twentieth-century printing. As a writer for the
Fleuron he was known for promoting the radical idea that
italics in book printing were too disruptive to the flow of text, and should be phased out. While this influenced some contemporary type designers such as van Krimpen and
Dwiggins at Linotype, Morison rapidly came to concede that the idea was misguided, and late in life commented that Times New Roman included an italic that "owed more to
Didot than dogma." Morison wrote prolifically on the history of printing.
Philip Gaskell however cautioned that "his books and papers were always stimulating, and frequently sound in their general conclusions, but at the same time he was inaccurate". ==Times New Roman==